"What is faithfulness, anyway? Can you be unfaithful to your own feelings and faithful to someone els..." — Mary Gaitskill

On the rare occasions when my mother perfumed herself, she was going out, and so I rarely smelled those special scents up close on her body, except during kisses goodbye.

My first and strongest memories about perfume come from childhood, from my mother, and they are a complex blend of her private and public selves.

Monogamy is desirable for many reasons, especially in creating a stable, emotionally connected home for children. But judging from centuries of human behavior, it is also a very difficult standard to meet.

I found the world extraordinarily strange, having first left home at 15.